New York was once a mecca for burlesque, with clubs like the National Winter Garden and performers such as Lili St. Cyr (right).

Lili St. Cyr

New York was once a mecca for burlesque, with clubs like the National Winter Garden and performers such as Lili St. Cyr (inset). (
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Behind The Burly Q

The Story of Burlesque in America

by Leslie Zemeckis

Skyhorse Publishing

Women paraded topless through Times Square, while men sitting in the balconies of nearby theaters openly pleasured themselves to live naked babes.

If this sounds like a description of New York in the seedy 1970s, you might be surprised to learn that this debauched city history comes from 50 years earlier, according to this lively account of the early twentieth-century’s most popular form of entertainment — burlesque.

The city got its first taste of burlesque, which had origins in the can-can dances of France and the show parodies of England known as “burlesques,” in the 1860s, courtesy of British imports that proved wildly popular.

The early 1900s saw New York’s Minsky family — brothers Billy, Herbert, Morton and Abe — build the beginnings of a New York burlesque empire. Abe, the eldest, “started showing racy films in a nickelodeon theater on the Lower East Side.” His father — believing that if his son was gonna be a perv, he might as well make real money at it — bought the National Winter Garden theater on Houston Street near Second Avenue, where a Whole Foods stands today, and gave Abe the sixth floor to run his burlesque shows.

“Borrowing from what he saw at the Folies Bergere in Paris,” writes Zemeckis, “Abe introduced the runway. The girls shook and shimmied among the sweating masses, invitingly an arms-length away.”

Burlesque caught on among the recent immigrants of the Lower East Side. The shows were cheap, the humor broad, and the allure of beautiful, barely-clothed women transcended language barriers.

Given the area’s poverty, the neighborhood theaters were often run down. Robert Alda, father of actor Alan Alda and the straight man in a popular burlesque comedy act with Red Buttons, would perform at the People’s Theater on the Bowery, where, Zemeckis writes, “rats [ran] freely backstage,” and which a dancer named Sherry Britton called “the home port of the city’s alcoholics.”

The Minskys opened many more theaters — including a flagship on 42nd Street, where the New Victory Theater stands today — hosting top performers such as the infamous Gypsy Rose Lee.

Throughout the Roaring Twenties, nudity was not uncommon on stage or screen, as legit Broadway shows used nude dancers, and one enterprising producer even “had his glorious review parading across Broadway with bare breasts on display.”

But during the Depression, these theaters, which charged more than burlesque shows, saw their business plummet while burlesque remained strong, with “14 [burlesque] shows running on Broadway simultaneously” during the 1930s. That decade also saw 42nd Street come alive with “large posters of the voluptuous strippers,” as Broadway theater managers seethed with anger and jealousy at the lost business.

Religious leaders began protesting the theaters, as they believed them to be “dens of sexual activity and prostitution.”

When Fiorello La Guardia became mayor of New York in 1934, he vowed to clean up what he considered the city’s moral degradation. Burlesque became one of his primary targets, and in 1937, 14 burlesque theaters were refused the renewal of their licenses, effectively banning burlesque in New York and putting thousands out of work.

About six months later, burlesque producers were opening new venues by calling their shows “follies” or “reviews,” while enterprising producers like Mike Todd (Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband) flouted the ban by putting burlesque performers in legit Broadway theaters.

Burlesque struggled on in New York in various forms. Fifty-second Street, which was known as Stripty Street, hosted popular burlesque clubs like Leon & Eddies and Club Samoa. The latter club headlined the likes of burlesque superstar Lili St. Cyr, who was known for her onstage bubble baths, while entertaining regular clientele such as Gary Cooper and Frank Sinatra.

Events of the ’40s and ’50s — including the introduction of the bikini, television, and Playboy Magazine — rendered burlesque increasingly irrelevant.

While burlesque was as ill-respected in its day as regular stripping is today, a recent revival, including at New York clubs like The Slipper Room and Duane Park, has allowed a new generation to view burlesque in a fresher light, giving performers of the day a stature that eluded them in their time.

“Things that give an audience pleasure are always at the bottom rung,” says actor Alan Alda, who grew up backstage at burlesque theaters as his dad performed. “Even though it takes skill, because there was an erotic element to burlesque, the [performers] were downgraded by society. ‘Cause [they were] involved in something that gave pleasure.”